Menu Close
Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Comic explainer: forest giants house thousands of animals (so why do we keep cutting them down?)

Giant eucalypts play an irreplaceable part in many of Australia’s ecosystems. These towering elders develop hollows, which make them nature’s high-rises, housing everything from endangered squirrel-gliders to lace monitors. Over 300 species of vertebrates in Australia depend on hollows in large old trees.

These “skyscraper trees” can take more than 190 years to grow big enough to play this nesting and denning role, yet developers are cutting them down at an astounding speed. In other places, such as Victoria’s Central Highlands Mountain Ash forests, the history of logging and fire mean that less than 1.2% of the original old-growth forest remains (that supports the highest density of large old hollow trees). And it’s not much better in other parts of our country.

David Lindenmayer explains how these trees form, the role they play – and how very hard they are to replace.


Read more: Mountain ash has a regal presence: the tallest flowering plant in the world


Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Read more: The plan to protect wildlife displaced by the Hume Highway has failed



Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

Want to write?

Write an article and join a growing community of more than 181,000 academics and researchers from 4,921 institutions.

Register now